_Some who have tried and failed--A disgrace to the family--A tragedy of
mirth--Living and dead as room-mates--A strange kind of kleptomania--A
pathetic story of fidelity_
|WHEN the interior of a house is set upon the stage, the offers
harbourage to the fair frail craft that almost at the outset show signs
of the storm through which they have passed before they made the
harbour. About a third of them are London born, the others came from the
quiet country to the city paved with gold, and in its glitter and
glamour were lost.
The fourth wall is always down in order that the audience may see what
is going on. In real life the dramas within the domestic interior are
played with the fourth wall up. Sometimes through the windows we may
catch a passing glance of domestic comedy, but when it comes to drama,
care is taken that no passer-by shall have a free entertainment.
I am going to take the fourth wall down to-day, not only of a
private house here and there, but of certain public and philanthropic
institutions. The Londoner out and about passes scores of such buildings
in an ordinary day's walk and hardly notices them. He has no thought of
the strange romances, of the dramatic mysteries, which lie behind the
dull brick walls.
Here in a busy thoroughfare is an excellent institution which of life's
voyage have been driven on the rocks of sin and shame, or have drifted
perilously near to them.
Though it is known by another name, I will call it a Rescue Home,
for its work is the rescue of young women in peril of evil, and the
sheltering of those who, having fallen, need a friendly and protecting
hand to save them from being engulfed in the depths.
It is an ordinary-looking house. There is nothing about it to attract
attention; nothing to suggest the mighty war between the evil and the
good that is being waged behind its dull brick walls.
If we enter we shall find young girls and young women going about the
work and occupation of the day silently and soberly. All are young, some
are pretty, some are haggard and wan.
A large number are of the servant class. Of 106 who were inmates of this
home during one year, 74 had been in domestic service, and of these 65
had been "generals." The predominance of this class is accounted for by
the fact that 99 of the 106 had "wandered and lost their way" between
the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. Of the remainder, 5 were factory
hands, 8 laundry workers, 2 sempstresses, and 2 girls still at school.
Many of the girls had tried to regain the right path, and failed because
of their friendlessness. Some of them had homes, but the doors were
closed against them.
Look at this frail, pale girl of eighteen. There is a look in the
sad brown eyes raised to yours as you pass her at her work which goes
straight to your heart. She is a girl who, penitent and broken-hearted,
wrote to her father, imploring him to let her return to her home. Here
is the letter she received in reply to her despairing appeal:--
_"Bessie,--We are surprised to think that you should ever have the cheek
to write to us again and to think we should give you another chance. I
think you have had a good chance, and we do not intend to give you any
more--in fact, if you dare to come and see us we will shut the door in
your face, for you are a disgrace to the family..., You said that you
wanted to go your own way; now you can go your own way.... You need not
take the trouble ever to write to us again, for if you do it will be
sent hack unopened; at the same time you know if ever I should meet you
it won't be good for you."_
But all the inmates are not of the ordinary class. With regard to some
of them there is a mystery that is never penetrated. That they are of
superior birth and education they cannot conceal, but for the rest they
are silent.
Not long since in this Home, at the hour when the Ladies' Committee was
sitting, a visitor came who particularly wished to see them.
Shown in, she handed to the Committee a bank-note for £20, and to the
surprise of every one explained that it was a thank-offering. A few years
previously this charming and beautifully dressed lady had been herself
an inmate of the Institution. She told her story frankly.
In a moment of temptation she had quitted her home, leaving no word
behind which would enable her parents to trace her.
Her wilful course led her down step by step until she found herself an
outcast from decent society, and she was then ashamed to let her friends
know of her whereabouts.
One night she came to the Refuge and applied for admission. She was
taken in, and after eighteen months' training she was placed in domestic
service. Shortly afterwards, in quite a remarkable way, her father
discovered her and took her home. Her father was a man of wealth,
holding a high position in Society.
When the "rescued" woman left the institution she was seen to enter a
carriage, which had been waiting a few doors lower down. The coachman
and footman were in aristocratic liveries, and had powdered hair.
What writer of fiction would have placed in a refuge for fallen women
a girl who, while she was training there for domestic service, had a
father whose men-servants wore powdered hair?
But behind the brick walls that strange romance was being worked out,
and the mystery of the girl's identity remains unsolved to this day.
Here is a house that looks like a private residence, standing in its own
grounds. There is a wall in front of it, and the door in this wall is
solid and shuts out a view of the garden.
It stands in a broad, busy thoroughfare, and thousands of people pass it
daily on foot or by 'bus and tram. They glance at the house carelessly,
perhaps, but very few of them know what lies behind the hiding walls.
Here not long ago, in the shady garden, sat a monarch of merriment, a
lord of laughterland, a bright comedian who had won world-wide fame, and
whose quips and cranks had made the nation gay. He was beloved by all
who love honest mirth. He was the idol of the people. And behind the
high wall he sat day after day, haunted by morbid fancies, a prey to
strange delusions, now singing a snatch of some old song of his that had
echoed round the world, now imagining that once again he was travelling
with a little show, and had to wheel his "props" and his baggage on a
truck from the station to the little hall in which the evening show was
to take place. Sometimes he would be patronizing, and generously bestow
a knighthood or a baronetcy on an attendant. One day he would raise
the kindly doctor who had charge of him to the peerage, and the next,
forgetting that he had thousands at the bank, he would worry about some
imaginary financial difficulty involving a few pounds.
He left this retreat after a time, cured, it was supposed, and once more
the public thronged to see him, and to laugh at his jokes and antics,
and to cheer him frantically. Alas! it was but a temporary lifting
of the cloud. There was a relapse, and then the end came swiftly and
mercifully.
I never see the pleasant retreat and look at the sheltering wall but I
think of the delightful droll whom I knew and loved, and who passed the
months of his madness here, his presence unsuspected by the thousands
who passed by. They little thought what a train of mirth lay hidden away
behind the few yards of brick.
Here, in a mean street in a poor district, is a house let out in rooms.
In the lower front room the ragged dirty blind is down. From this
house you will see in a couple of hours, if you wait and watch, a grand
funeral procession start. There will be an open car drawn by a pair
of horses, and on it will be a wreath-laden coffin. Funeral coaches and
four-wheel cabs will follow with many mourners, and the street will be
filled with a crowd of women and children assembled to see the grand
funeral of Widow Wilson's eldest son.
While you are waiting for the funeral car and carriages to arrive, I
will take down the fourth wall. Now you can see inside the room with the
drawn blind.
It is a poverty-stricken, squalid room. In the centre is a rickety
table, round which the widow and her three remaining children are
gathered, making a scanty meal before they put on their black to follow
the dead lad to the cemetery. The thin stew has been taken from the
fire, and is being served out on chipped and cracked plates to the
children, and in the centre of the table at which the family are dining
lies the corpse.
I am not inventing the details to paint a picture of life among the
poor--I am giving the actual facts as discovered by the School Board
officer of the district, who called to inquire why one of the children
had not attended school the previous day.
No one seeing the elaborate and expensive funeral that started a couple
of hours later from the house could have imagined the scene there was
to be witnessed behind the brick wall. The living and the dead had been
together in that one room for over a week.
There are many reasons why funerals are not hurried in the poorer
districts. Here is a case in which one was delayed for three weeks.
Mrs. Jones's baby died just as it was completing its first year's
experience of life. Mr. Jones drew the money from the burial club
and gave an order to the undertaker. But before the day fixed for the
funeral arrived Mr. Jones had lost half the money by backing horses that
didn't win. In his distress he spent the balance at the public-house.
"No money, no funeral," was the undertaker's motto, so the baby
uncoffined, but shrouded in a sheet, was left in the cupboard.
Mrs. Jones, when the disaster was made known to her, told her story to
her poor neighbours. They generously clubbed together, and in a few days
they handed her the needed amount.
In her gratitude Mrs. Jones invited a few of her neighbours, who had not
subscribed, to drink the health of those who had.
The health-drinking affected Mrs. Jones so much that returning home she
was absent-minded, and the balance of the funeral money was stolen from
her by a thief who had followed her out of the public-house.
The body lay in the cupboard for another week, and the news of the
delayed funeral reaching the authorities, an official called, and baby
was at last taken away and buried by the parish.
That was the greatest punishment that could have been inflicted on the
parents.
If a modern Asmodeus, instead of lifting the roof, would take us around
London and remove the fourth walls, we should be astonished at the
tragedy, or moved to laughter by the farcical comedy, that would be
suddenly revealed.
If, for instance, the wall were down to-night in front of this
"desirable residence" in a West End square, we should see into the
bedroom of the son of the house.
The family have retired for the night. Up in his own room the son, a
good-looking, elegant, and cultured young man of five-and-twenty, is
gloating over his treasures.
He has locked his door, and now he is contemplating with the most
intense satisfaction several sets of false teeth which he has arranged
on a little table in front of him.
His own teeth are sound and white. He has no need for false ones. Why,
then, has he bought twenty sets?
He has not purchased them. He has stolen them.
His peculiar form of kleptomania is appropriating false teeth. He steals
them whenever he has a chance. He abstracts them from the door-cases of
dentists, from the shops in which they are displayed. He would not
dream of being dishonest in any other way, but false teeth have an
irresistible fascination for him.
If we were to take down the wall of a still more aristocratic residence
we might see a lady of title opening a drawer and carefully counting her
large store of serviettes. The astonishing thing about her collection is
that the monograms are all different.
Wherever this lady lunches or dines she secures a serviette, puts it in
her pocket, and takes it home to add to her vast assortment.
The young man could afford to buy the false teeth he fancies so much;
the titled lady could buy serviettes all day long without feeling the
outlay. But both prefer to _steal_ the article that they have a strange
desire to possess.
We will look through one more brick wall before we finish our present
trip.
Once more it is a "Rescue Home" in front of which we pause. The wall is
down, and we see into a well-ordered house, in which a number of young
women are engaged in various occupations.
Look well at that short, pale-faced girl, whose features bear traces of
the life she has lived, the sorrow she has known.
She is going about her work quietly, silently, mechanically. You would
think to look at her that she had been a general servant of the "slavey"
type in some poor household. As a matter of fact she described herself,
when the police demanded her occupation, as a "charwoman."
But the girl is only twenty-one now, and probably never did a day's
"charring" in her life, unless she would so describe the occasional
tidying up of the room in which she once lived as the companion of a
young professional burglar.
A short time ago I saw this girl at the Old Bailey trying to save the
life of her lover by committing perjury. I have never witnessed a more
pathetic scene.
The great beads of agony stood on the girl's brow as she looked at the
youth on his trial for murder, and endeavoured to retract the damning
admissions she had previously made to the police--admissions which led
to her lover's arrest, and practically put the rope round his neck.
The law has laid the man in a murderer's grave within the prison walls.
The girl a few days before his execution bore a dead child.
In two months of her young life she sounded the deepest depths of human
tragedy. She has known a torture and a despair which few women of her
age have been fated to endure.
But in this quiet home she is being cared for and tended, and
noble-hearted women are waiting and hoping for the moment when she can
be given the chance of a better life.
In the pocket of the dress she wears there are two letters carefully
wrapped up in thick paper to preserve them. They are the last letters
her murderer lover wrote her. She will treasure them all her life.
If in the early days of the trial we could have removed the wall of the
prison in which the man was confined we should have seen him scratching
the girl's portrait on the door of his cell with the point of a common
pin, and labelling her with a word that expressed his anger against
her for telling the truth about him when she fell into the hands of the
police.
He is dead, but behind the grey walls upon which we are gazing to-day is
the life tragedy of the girl he left behind him.